Should Darwin be de-emphasized?

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A week after events on the Kansas University campus and nationwide marked the 198th birthday of Charles Darwin, ![][1]there's an article in [The Chronicle of Higher Education][2] describing one scholar's view that Darwin should be played down."Evolutionary biology is a branch of natural science that is far beyond anything Darwin could have imagined," evolutionary biologist, Ulrich Kutschera, is quoted saying at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.An excerpt:"Mr. Kutschera, a professor of plant physiology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kassel in Germany, said scientists should emphasize that evolution is a fully formed field of biological study 'built up by generations of non-dogmatic scientists.' Terms like Darwinism can make evolutionary biology seem like an ideology, rather than a focus of empirical work, he said."It's an issue that's not lost on the "Darwin Day" organizers at KU. Steven Case, one of the planners of this year's events, said "the Darwin Day stuff came around not because we're trying to deify Darwin," but because scientists are trying to do a better job explaining what they know to the public.-contributed by Eric Weslander. [1]: http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:8yNwEhMGRoPVtM:http://www.liblab.it/var/news/storage/images/scienza_e_tecnologia/scheda_biografia_di_sir_charles_darwin_e_l_antidarwinismo_in_italia/30120-1-ita-IT/scheda_biografia_di_sir_charles_darwin_e_l_antidarwinismo_in_italia_large.gif [2]: http://chronicle.com

Comments

Darwin is to Biology, what Newton was to Physics. To "de-emphasize" his contribution would neglect content to the theory. What I would like to see is more attention to Alfred Russell Wallace, who has contributed much in the way of evolutionary science, but has received very little accolades from the public-at-large. Wallace was a contemporary of Darwin, but with much less celebrity at the time.